Frank commentary from a retired call girl

Guest Columnist: Marijke Vonk

Marijke Vonk is a Dutch sex-positive psychologist who specializes in working with sexual minorities; besides working as a therapist, she is a writer and lecturer on various topics concerning sexuality. Since I discovered her blog a few months ago I’ve been repeatedly impressed by both her thoughts and the way she expresses them; if we had a thousand allies like her sex worker rights would be all but accomplished. So naturally, I had to ask her to do a guest column for me!

When it comes to sex, the Netherlands is known as a tolerant country. We’ve got marriage equality for same-sex couples, a usually laid-back attitude towards sexual diversity, famous red-lights districts and since 2000 legalised brothel-keeping. But in recent years, the human trafficking panic has caught on and attitudes towards sex work have changed. “The happy hooker does not exist” claimed Dutch politician Gert-Jan Segers, one of the initiators of new legislation to criminalise clients of sex workers. “All prostitutes are forced” states Frits Rouvoet, an “expert” on sex work. It’s interesting how these men will not change their minds, not even when numerous sex workers contact them to let them know they are indeed happy and not forced.

As in the rest of the world, inflated numbers of incidences of trafficking are used to reduce sex workers’ rights. The National Reporter on Trafficking in the Netherlands claims thousands of reported cases of possible victims of trafficking, but these reports include registration of non-sex worker women travelling alone (!) and sex workers visiting family abroad. Even sex workers who buy new things, have a lot of friends or like their workplace are regarded with suspicion and reported as possible victims. Sadly, these “thousands of reported cases” are repeated by politicians and NGO’s who claim more action (and money) is needed to combat this extensive problem. When confronted with the inaccuracy of their claims they seem wholly uninterested. “Maybe the problem is slightly exaggerated. If that means we get more help for victims I have no moral objection”.

Most people involved in the Dutch rescue industry don’t seem to mean any harm towards sex workers themselves, they genuinely appear to want to help victims. They don’t see the harm, and I think that’s where one of the major issues in Dutch sex workers’ rights lie. They truly don’t see how their actions are harming both victims and sex workers. And from a psychological viewpoint this makes sense: it feels good to fight for a just cause, to help powerless innocent victims, to be one of the good guys. Accepting that the “victims” not only refuse your help but are actually victimised by your actions causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance, something we all try to avoid. It’s no wonder then that rescuers deny facts and sex workers’ experience, but their ignorance is far from harmless.

During recent raids on legal brothels hundreds of policemen violently forced their way into the workplace of twenty or thirty sex workers, smashing up their belongings, taking their earnings and bringing the women, their clients and anyone else near the establishment to police stations for questioning. Scaring clients of sex workers is currently a popular method, not only by harassing them during raids but also by lying about the prevalence of forced prostitution: This has caused a noticeable drop in business for Eastern European sex workers in red light districts. New legislation is being proposed to criminalise clients of sex workers when they “should have known” those sex workers are forced to work. To be clear, sex with people who are obviously forced is of course already illegal and called rape. But the major initiator of this new legislation is of the opinion that all sex workers are forced, this is simply a step towards end-demand laws. Eastern European women are disproportionally stalked by police under the guise of anti-trafficking, they are followed around airports and stopped and questioned in public areas. Prostitutes working from home are raided, their belongings confiscated and are even kicked out of their homes. Necessary permits for brothel-keeping are impossible to get, which has resulted in a strong power imbalance between brothel-workers and the proprietors, a situation which almost begs for abuse and exploitation. Sex workers have no legal way of arranging a work place for themselves. The lies about trafficking and forced prostitution have resulted in increased funding of rescue organisations and ceased funding of sex workers’ rights organisations. Actual victims are becoming more and more invisible under all the bloated claims, making them harder to reach. Outside of the Netherlands the situation is even worse; anti-trafficking laws and regulations have hurt the position of sex workers and has increased police brutality towards sex workers. Rescue organisations are currently the biggest perpetrators of human trafficking in the world, abducting women and girls from their homes and workplaces, keeping them in shelters against their will and forcing them to do manual labour under terrible circumstances and for a criminally low wage.

In order to change this, we need to make people see the harm they are doing. But it’s difficult to convince people of the idea that they believe in lies and that their actions have resulted in the harm and even death of others. In couples therapy I often explain the idea of “the golden bridge out” of a conflict. If you and your partner disagree you need to give the other person a graceful way of admitting they are wrong; if the only way they can change their mind and agree with you is by agreeing they are a lying piece of garbage with no sense of empathy, they’re not going to agree. Always give the other person a golden bridge out, a graceful way of changing their minds that doesn’t necessarily involve crushing their self worth. I think we need such a bridge out for the antis, the rescuers, a graceful path for them to change their minds without having to state they were the bad guys. They need a story in which their egos can stay intact. They need a golden bridge out of their far from victimless crimes.

33 Responses

Yes, the golden bridge concept is also why satire, while deeply satisfying to the aggrieved, has little impact on those with alternate world views. I hope you will consider a summary of ‘golden bridge’ arguments as a main post some time.

Marijke Vonk’s analogy to her couples’ therapy, “The golden bridge out” is a good one. A bridge, an imagery to cross trouble waters, a means to restore to what it was before the conflict took place. This metaphor to restore is like restoring an old house to its former dignity. The word Dignity is used with indent here. Maintaining or resorting person’s dignity is to see and preserve their humanity. To demonize someone as an adversary, is to dehumanize “them”, strip them of dignity, made them worthy of even being killed. When this connective breakdown occurs all parties including the greater community have a human need to be restored or re-dignified.

In Vonk’s call for couples therapy to be applied to Dutch policy discussions, I actually hear her call for “Restorative Practices” to be used. There is a “Restorative Justice” movement in Holland. How does one find it? Unofficially it’s all over. Officially look for a verity of Restorative Practices used by Dutch Judges and within the Ministry of Security and Justice.

As Vonk points out conflicts between people are never confined and always have a ripple effect on the community or society at large. Distortions or lying for gain “of one group over another” or “at the other’s expense”, degrades — corpus communities such as the Netherlands in unseemly and unpredictable ways.

Vonk carefully differentiates between government that seeks to enhance people’s lives through regulation and individuals seeking control of people’s bodies and minds. Vonk’s distinction is important because we need Governments and Government regulation to spear us from self-serving freewheeling libertarians mobs. A simple example; there is a common interest in promoting and regulating condom use and ALOWINING willing sensuality. Both promote safer connection; within people, between people and as community.

Vonk’s central point is Government over time first regulated and then stopped slavery, – outlawing, corrosion, extortion, labor without compensation, assault, and outlawed these specifically when associated with sex in rape laws. Therefore the attempt to castigate, “sex”, sex participants (husbands, wives, sexual young/old people), or those who enjoy sexual commerce is based on degrading people’s humanity generally and the humanity of sex-commerce participants specifically. Vonk’s bridge metaphor is to act restoratively, to restore both the traffic-rescue perpetrator’s Dignity and the receivers’ Dignity.

Vonk’s points are clear and valid. Her question I guess is how can the restorative powers within Dutch state and Dutch society be rallied around this violent and corrosive effect on people’s humanity and the Dutch Community generally?

Dignity! The Restorative Practice road, available in the Netherlands, is a “way out” to consider. This form of diplomacy with Dignity has potentials and in the past has proven to work in a few stale-mated instances when compromises were needed to avoid escalation.
In the current situation of prostitution policy and enforcement, it is needed. The very problem is not “Government” (an anonymous body, neither good nor bad) but the personal beliefs and agendas of a few authoritarian top level individuals in the Government, namely in the Ministries of Justice and Security, and of Social Affairs and Employment. The opinion of religious parliamentarians Rouvoet and Segers, and a few others, would get no real tracking in society, I think, if the very vocal and extremely competent and shrewd (non-religious) politician Lodewijk Asscher wouldn’t be pulling the cart backed internationally by various vocal anti-prostitution movements.

This Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, previously the successful architect of the vicious anti-prostitution policy and campaign for the Amsterdam Red Light District, and a man with the biggest Ego and the biggest mouth on the political stage, is the guy to get into the couple therapy / Restorative Justice room to face the “golden bridge out” option (together with his apostles, the in many aspects good Mayor of Amsterdam, Van der Laan, and the former bad mayor of Utrecht, Wolfsen, who effectively managed to close down the entire RLD in Utrecht – neither of them religious zealots, all members of the Socialist party.)

But who will be the qualified and dignified, by both parties trusted diplomat-therapist to first work on these men’s personal “moral politics” minds, make them “belief” in the value of objective facts, fill in their ignorance, and then have them go into “couple therapy” with The Prostitution, represented by who? .

Governments and local administrations are as good or bad as the people at the top and their coterie of personal advisers. Public debate is indispensable and productive, but in the Dutch prostitution battle the key will be, I think, ongoing personal conversations.with government leaders. Compared to other countries, the battlefield is small, and government prostitution officials are just a few and in principle close enough to citizens and daily life. The million dollar question is how to get the top prostitution politicians voluntarily – and with Dignity – to the table for truce negotiations.

Your million-dollar question is the question? People will sit down together when the pain and disruption gets to the point the only way out is across the bridge. Unfortunately all to often this happens after the destruction of war. Which is why vengeance, violence, and any corrective measures of the punitive justice systems have great appeal. One way to answer your question is, “how can enough violence be inflicted on either the pro or anti prostitution forces they will trust any system enough to sit down with their opponents?”

Another question, which is the one I heard you ask ” ‘is how to get the top _______________ politicians voluntarily – and with Dignity – to the table for truce negotiations’ before the community is destroyed by war or simple neighborhood painful conflict?” First it has to be an actionable item. Something concrete that was said or done. In legal terms this is a civil wrong/”a tort” or a crime.

In community terms it is something concrete and objective that signifies the greater conflict that is taking place. The actionable item is the entrance point to examining the conflict. The punitive legal system is best equipped to find either for or against the actionable item what was said or done. The more (your term) “voluntarily” people embrace a restorative system the more likely they will be willing and able to explore the effects of their action, take responsibility for them and co-create a way forward. Sometimes now, paradoxically the criminal and tort justice systems offer a voluntary restorative practice to explore conflicts.

Another thing that is difficult to do is invite the people who need to be there. And everyone who is invited should get the opportunity to name others who need to be there. “Needs to be there” is very different from who one would like to be there either as one’s Army or intellectual authority like a Nobel Laureate. As you point out the Netherlands is small and the relevant players are few in number, therefore the task is manageable even for policy matters.

The Restorative Practice needs to be definable; a place, a time, a known procedure. Rules have to be transparent agreed to, communally supported. The more voluntary system is the more insurance there is that people will only attend if they can enter and leave with Dignity, feel they can be heard and understood and that others will know their truths. It’s a craft to build a restorative system that offers this. “Participation” in a restorative practice is a craft learned while using the system. Using a Restorative Patrice enables people to move forward to take responsibility for their actions while recognizing the good reasons they did things, sometimes horrible things. And finally recognizing both that everyone did something to create and escalate the conflict and everyone has something to offer in attempting to find a way forward. This is true even of seemly uninvolved people, the community, the Netherlands.

Needed therefore is a) someone to define an actionable item and invite someone in the conflict colony b) Conflict participants know who needs to be present and therefore invite each other, c) Create or use a restorative practice which is definable with restorative values everyone understands, agrees to and abides by. d) Recognize participation should be voluntary to ensure no one or no group has systemic advantage.

Just as warfare is not easy or pleasant participating in Restorative Practices is not easy or pleasant. Recognize these people are in unpleasant painful conflict after all. It’s not normal every day conflict. Restorative Practices do offer a viable alternative to warfare and the punitive justice systems of violence, revenge, infliction of pain on others to signify the pain they caused. There are many people in Holland who have the will and ability to use non-violent force to persevere in inviting the people warring over sexual practices to a Restorative Process.

Perseverance takes time. Perseverance pays off both in warfare and restoration of warring parties. The results can’t be more starkly different for the community, the Netherlands.

It is my experience that trying to unravel community conflict is paralyzing and we get stuck in patterns of retribution that while effective actually destabilize relations rather than stabilize or restore them. I very much enjoyed your detail and concrete description of some aspects of this conflict. It’s all-foreign to me I know very little about Dutch culture, people and can’t read Dutch so your translation is enlightening. Unlike the Blogisphere you give examples and context and understanding.

Here are some reflections, cautiously lengthy for the Blogisphere, and not original–sprinkled with a few facts about the Dutch situation:

What could make a “Golden Bridge Out” Restorative Justice intervention feasible, between the Dutch Government and The Prostitution branch? My preliminary conclusion is: at the moment nothing.
Why?

In couple therapy, the conflict is between two people who have been together for a (long) period of time, shared life and one another. They share a lot of positive things and they don’t want to lose one another. That’s why they are together in trying to solve the stale mate.

The relationship between society (government) and prostitution is the opposite. They have been destined to co-exist but for complex reasons that have to do with sex and are no one’s fault, they have never settled in like partners.

As I see it, society has a love-hate relationship with sex; more hate than love, though. Society wishes that sex would not be there, at least not continuously. The permanence is the burden.

Being sexual is uncomfortable. And if one feels uncomfortable with it, it is like a life sentence. For society, sex is bad news. That’s why we (in Western civilization at least) try to exorcise it by calling it love, as in “making love,” or–even worse– romance, as in “we are now romantically involved.” Ugh!

If sex is bad news, society’s trouble with prostitution is that every individual prostitute holds this bad news up in public, right before your eyes: Prostitution? Sex for sex’s sake? It’s real, baby! It won’t go away! Deal with it! Deal with me! I won’t go away!

This is not meant to be aggressive. It never was, but it is perceived as aggression, aggression against decent society.

For ages decent society has been pretty good at looking away, neglecting and denying prostitution and prostitutes. Prostitution was more or less manageable.
But over the past half century, population (over)growth, technology and migration (among others) have made this uncomfortable human reality an in-your-face issue. Worse: it looks like it is here to stay.

Globally, prostitution is now so tangible, dense and intense, that society can’t avoid or escape it any longer, let alone look away.
In the past, incidents, conflicts and skirmishes with prostitution were part and parcel of local and regional life. Recently these local incidents with governments have been able to connect rapidly and together they have mushroomed into an all-out vicious Prostitution World War from the side of society.

More than ever sex scares the shit out of society, for whatever reason.
And who is to blame for it? Not the message (sex), but the messenger: Prostitution.
Every prostitute.
Society is in a total sex panic and takes it out on prostitution and prostitutes.

Governments are totally confused and in denial mode. No one can hear the Voice of Reason, i.e. the factual, objective research saying the problem is different from what you think and not as big as you think. Don’t be so scared!
Governments look away and deny. They listen to panicked prohibitionists and abolitionists preaching to society through virtual megaphones “on behalf” of “victims,” and governments believe what they preach. It confirms and fosters the panic. Governments worldwide refuse to acknowledge and respect either the Voice of Reason or the Messengers themselves. They simply neglect scholarship; and at prostitution and prostitutes they keep screaming:
Go away messenger!
Silence.
You won’t? Then we’ll scare you away. We’ll kill you. We’ll show you.
Try as you might, says Prostitution unruffled. You know I won’t go away.

More panic. More anger. More rage. No more logic.

Everywhere governments concoct stupid emergency laws, regulations and restrictions, justified by the state of war.
By making laws they create the crimes they need to legitimate warfare.
They mobilize ever larger armies of police forces that use ever more brute force. Scare tactics. In the Netherlands they are the official policy since at least 2005 (www.vorige.nrc.nl/article1750940.ece).

To appease their “human” conscience and feelings governments create “victims” so that they have a solid moral cause: their “rescue and exit” programs.
They abuse buyers and pronounce them criminals, also scare tactics.
They abuse something as inhuman as slavery and trafficking and blow it up it into a global specter: a parallel criminal sex industry meant to engulf the age old benevolent and beneficial regular one, the one with no victims.
So we end up with a real thing to fight, the real “legitimate enemy” we need. And we surely do the right thing, we have victims to rescue. God bless us.

In the Netherlands, a society that has traditionally been pragmatically permissive towards prostitution, this War virus has now also fully infected and infested the government (much more than it has society).
Consequently we also have an over-sized and fully equipped combat force, a government sponsored private rescue industry, plus all the other spin-offs. We have Jobs. Good business.

The infestation began somewhere in the mid-Nineties with a huge parliamentary inquiry into the disorganized police investigation force incapable to fight heavy crime.
The conclusion was essentially that the law and law enforcement facilitated the infiltration of heavy organized crime into society. Amsterdam was singled out, notably the Red Light District and immediate surroundings.

This criminality virus is already noticeable in the motivations for the sloppy, ambiguous law that lifted the ban on pimp-ship (brothels) in 2000 (the first prostitution regulation bill was introduced way back in 1984, but for prudent reasons the idea could not find support for 15 years).
Instead of acknowledging prostitution and prostitutes for their own social merit and function, the formal motivation for the law was “helping prostitutes.” In reality it was getting a grip on the evil of criminal entrepreneurs (heavy organized crime).
The government’s primary interest has not been the sex worker, but “crime fighting.” All municipal regulations since 2000 resulting from the law show this.

The first national law (named BIBOB) after the ban-lifting that impacted prostitution directly, went into effect in 2003. It was designed to give municipalities a legal instrument to arbitrarily control (reduce, delay, frustrate) the licensing of sex businesses every time white-collar crime (money laundering, tax evasion) was suspected.
“Every time” means here “always,” because the very fact that you run, or want to run, a sex business makes you suspect of organized heavy crime.

BIBOB is an effective tool to help minimalize the sex branch.The best proof of its intentions and arbitrary application came late in 2006.
Amsterdam used it on a mega scale to close in one sweep 20% of the windows in the Amsterdam Red Light District, the majority of which were owned by one entrepeneur.
When this owner took the city to court and the city was about to lose the case because it couldn’t prove the legitimacy of its suspicions, the city couldn’t afford either loss of face or a real obstacle for its reduction policy. So it didn’t wait for the judge’s verdict and his public opinion. This would have revealed the arbitrary, whimsical use of the law.
At the last moment the city settled out of court and bought for €25 million the properties from the man whose business it had closed on suspicion of heavy crime money activities!

So much for our government’s honest consideration of the sex worker’s interests. It’s a front, of course. A lie.
The objective of government policy is major reduction of sex work facilities, at all costs. Even doing business with someone after having accused him publicly of heavy crime is fine. I don’t blame the entrepeneur for having taken the city to the cleaners, also financially.

By now, the government has sold itself fully and with the passion of panic to the raging Prostitution World War and, as Marijke Vonk describes so well, it uses the same scare tactics, tools and armies as most other participating governments.

The name of the latest bill that is in parliament right now says it all: “Prostitution Regulation and Fighting Wrongs in the Sex Branch.”
Also telling is the official name for the regular discussions of the matter between parliamentary commissions and the Cabinet: Prostitution and Trafficking.

So, the Dutch government is not trying to deal with prostitution itself; it deals exclusively with the self-created specter, the parallel criminal sex industry named trafficking and other nice things.

Until the Government body shows clear signs that its officials begin to listen seriously to both Prostitutes and the Voice of Reason (scholarship), I don’t think a Golden Bridge Out therapy is feasible. The minimum requirements are that both parties acknowledge and respect each other’s existence and right to exist, and don’t use lies and tactics based on lies. Currently the Dutch Government cannot legitimately claim these minimum requirements for itself.

Maggie McNeill says it repeatedly here, and I agree: unfortunately society as a whole has to go to the bottom of this cruel prostitution insanity before it can get better.

Meanwhile, God bless all people practicing sex work, the immigrants in particular—human beings like us all. They need recognition, understanding and normal human respect.
I am not worried about Prostitution.

Thank you for forewarning us as to the length of your reflection. You have added greatly to the discussion! It will take me sometime to contemplate your thoughts.

But quickly, I agree with your statement “I don’t think a Golden Bridge Out therapy is feasible. The minimum requirements are that both parties acknowledge and respect each other’s existence and right to exist, and don’t use lies and tactics based on lies.” Although loss of trust within a couple often is manifest as strategies often seen in the body politic as “lies and tactics based on lies.” So I see direct parallels in relationships between people and within the body politic or as community. Would you allow me to offer two additional concerns?

First is therapy is very expensive both in Euro terms and commitment of time. There are proven couples strategies like Sue Johnson’s EFT that can minimumize costs. Even proven couple’s therapy is still very expensive, elitist, requires a highly trained professional and out of the reach of many many people in the community.

Secondly couples therapy does not involve the community. Couples therapy is again highly limited.

I think couples therapy model is unworkable in the situation we have been discussing. As I understood Marijke Vonk, she was suggesting that using many of the same things found successful in getting ‘two loving people’ to reconnect after being hateful to each other might be useful within the body politic. I did not hear her say Couples Therapy is easily transferable to a community setting.

Perhaps the question Vonk was asking is if not couple therapy, “what is it?” And it might be two questions.

First “What is it?” is loosely defined as what process and rules are understood – agreed before people sit down together. That is the easier part.

The second and perhaps the harder part and what I think you wanted me to know was how difficult or impossible it might be sit down together. Strategies like changing sexual attitudes, the passage of time, looking to God for majority public opinion, or as Maggie foretells divine intervention by law courts don’t seem reliable or expedient.

I think I hear and share you understanding of the extreme difficulty of using couples therapy as a response to the conflict you so eloquently outlined. And we share an understanding of how difficult it is to bring warring parties to sit down as the body politic for reconnection between people, within people and as community. Is that it?

Please forgive us, it will take sometime to contemplate what it is you wanted us to know about all of your reflections. You have given us much to contemplate as community.

1.
The toughest and most expedient and cheapest conflict solution therapy is the simplest and most human:

the two people-in-conflict sitting on the floor of an empty but comforting room, possibly naked.
They face one another, knees touching. relaxed.
They hold hands (on the knees) and look one another in the eyes — for one full hour. One full hour.
No words.
Silence.
(the “therapist/mediator” is sitting in a corner, but out of sight. His / her presence is essential.)

You can imagine what happens in mind, heart, and body during one hour of eye contact and holding hands, knees touching.
Initially, it does take some courage.

I have practiced this a few times at crucial moments, with the desired result: the beginning of conflict resolution.
After one hour of this kind of trust-building intimacy, one can talk and keep talking. (Mediator always required to keep things in perspective)

2.
It’s not an original idea, and no utopia.

The Utopia (?) was suggested in 1927 by the 15 year old John Cage in an Oratorical Contest lecture, the year he was the valedictorian of his graduating high school class.
15 year and graduating valedictorian?
Yes, he was a smart ass (with all respect) and a phenomenally influential artist, very pragmatic but way ahead of his time.

Here is the excerpt from OTHER PEOPLE THINK:

“What are we going to do? What ought we to do? One of the greatest blessings that the United States could receive in the near future would be to have her industries halted, her business discontinued, her people speechless, a great pause in her world of affairs created, and finally to have everything stopped that runs, until everyone should hear the last wheel go around and the last echo fade away. [.] Then we should be capable of answering the question, ‘What ought we to do?’ For we should be hushed and silent, and we should have the opportunity to learn that other people think”.

Before we can get parties in the prostitution war (and any other war) to talk, maybe first a Global Day of Silence according to Cage’s thoughts? A bit of Utopia can be helpful.

Your description of being with someone; knee to knee, eye to eye for a period of time, using this as way with a helper to transcend conflict and Marina Abramović’s performance of “”The Artist is Present,” a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum’s atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.” reminded me of eye contact between dying WWII POWs building the Burma Railway, AKA the Death Railway. Whereby one man could through shear love and connection could keep a dying one alive for a period of time. If for a moment the life sustainer broke contact when he looked back the man would have died in that instant.

What I think you wanted us to know is the healing power of presence and connection has within people, between people and as community. And that taking time to do that is immportant for us all. Was that it? Is there more?

Regarding your reflections of 20 August several things come up for me. One is and we see it here with Maggie in her blog — a concentration on the other side. There is speculation as to the other side’s inhumanity, a diagnosis of immorality if you will. Of course this is what the other side does to Maggie’s side too. That all makes for good drama and fascinating reading in the tabloids and blogs. This rhetoric provokes a fear, a horror that as humans we tend to respond to as if attacked. How is the Dutch community affected?

One thing I think you might have misunderstood was my saying that ” Officially look for a verity of Restorative Practices used by Dutch Judges and within the Ministry of Security and Justice.” as to took many shots at the Ministry. What I wanted you to know generally Judges and Justice ministries know all to well the shortcomings of the punitive (revenge) justice systems. And that Judges and ministries are increasingly turning to Restorative Practices and Holland is no exception. Emerging restorative practices co-exists with the anti-sex worker conditions and policies you described in Holland. Actually you make my point for a restorative approach even stronger. Since Ministries and Judges have knowledge of Restorative practices it is more likely they can turn to them if forced.

And that force would be people without violence leading others to sit down and hear each other for the good of the community. As you pointed out neither the drivers of anti-sex policies are likely to call for a conference nor are the pro-sex folks. What I understand from you they are both content to have a war. But restorative practices are not the Maginot Line, nor are they win or loose Nation State Constructions like Battle of Waterloo. Restorative practices are built throughout the community for the benefit of the community and there by take on national meaning. They are a community alterative to war not a mediation of warring parties.

Your reference to the life sustaining energy of undisturbed, focused physical eye contact between people, as for instance at the horrifying Death Railway site where every prisoner’s life was hanging between life and death, is powerful and appropriate in this context.
Do we need to question the powerfully healing and beneficial side of sex, the regular adjustment of the flow of energies? Any sex worker with only a grain of human sensitivity and insight knows this aspect of the work from experience. What are we talking about? What is the battle about? Not individual sex, but social morals.
The painful and absurd paradox of the battle between pro’s and anti’s is that their stake is different: The anti’s ultimate stake is as narrow as can be: morals based on fear and exclusion; the pro’s ultimate stake is as broad as can be: human contact, interaction, respect, dignity—ethics based on inclusion.
There simply is no common ground for a Golden Bridge Exit approach.

The other paradox is that while the battle is being publicly fought by only relatively few anti’s and pro’s warriors, all known by name, hundreds of thousands of sex workers are actively doing their work with hundreds of thousands of clients benefiting—they are anonymous and invisible, at least to society and the warriors. The quality of each separate encounter does not depend on whether it is legal, illegal, condoned, tolerated, morally right or wrong. Even while we discuss this as pro’s in the abstract, in cyberspace and without any physical contact, sex workers are literally in touch with clients, they are having eye contact, holding one another, having intercourse—they practice the only solution to the problem! WTF! For them a healing good time physically, while we are entertaining ourselves being smart about it.
The anti’s are fighting wind mills like Don Quixote. The anti’s know that those healing good times will never leave mankind. They know their battle is a delusion; hence their virulence and exasperation, the repetitiveness of their arguments and limited choice of words, their unwillingness to listen to reason and accept research facts and opinions of sex workers, the vicious circle they tread like donkeys the treadmill. This makes their battle cries so noisy. The decibels must compensate for lack of content, the fact that their fight is harming the very people they say they want to protect. The absurdity is sad as well as painful.
“This rhetoric provokes a fear, a horror that as humans we tend to respond to as if attacked. How is the Dutch community affected?”

I think that the sex workers community in Holland is affected pretty badly by the government’s actions, worse, I think, than by its accompanying rhetoric, stigmatization and trafficking scares.
I don’t see the Dutch society at large being really interested in a sex work battle because in general it knows no moral opposition to sex work, and it is pragmatically permissive.
While media are by and large parroting government statements (after all it is news), public comments by individuals are negligible, at least in number.
I see no public anti-movement of any relevance. Quite the contrary. Last Sunday there was an Open Day in the Amsterdam Red Light District, so heavily under siege by the national and local government. It was organized by Mariska Majoor for her Prostitution Information Center’s 20th anniversary, and it was a fun, colorful public celebration of all kinds of sex work. It attracted a good number of visitors and didn’t raise a single eyebrow, as far as I know.

As I see it, in Holland the current battle wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for a government agenda that needs a prostitution war for three ulterior reasons: urban planning, immigration, and economy. It is an artificially created and intentionally vicious battle. The vulgar scare tactics are taken from the global trafficking and local heavy crime fighting repertoires, and in this society really antiquated. That’s why they don’t really hit society’s conscience at large. I think this strategy focus is so disproportionately heavy on these social aspects, because using morality arguments here would be counterproductive and run into legal / constitutional problems.

The real, real danger for sex work and sex workers is that this social indifference with sex work will make the government ultimately succeed in its ambitions to minimize sex work facilities as much as possible (so-called for other ‘good’ reasons). They work at it unnoticed by a social radar alarm.

As I have said before, the law is on the government’s side as long as it targets the facilities (the branch) and not sex work itself. Sex work itself is legal and not regulated. It can be practiced legally by anyone at anytime and anywhere, as long as it is outside the regulated branch. So, the government argues that if it targets only the branch for other reasons than sex work, it does not infringe upon a citizen’s right to practice sex work. This legal loophole is what really endangers the livelihood and well-being of all sex workers in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, as we know, individual sex work regulated by a government in anti-mode, will make matters worse, much worse.

More than ever it is imperative to emphasize the immensely positive values that sex work and sex have for society’s well-being. In our extremely material, economic-production society we have long reached the stage that sex work’s therapeutic human values should be fully recognized and promoted. Instead, a handful of noisy moral crusaders still dictate the agendas.

Thanks for the reflection “Your reference to the life sustaining energy of undisturbed, focused physical eye contact between people, as for instance at the horrifying Death Railway site where every prisoner’s life was hanging between life and death, is powerful and appropriate in this context.”
Thanks not for the “complement” but for letting me know what you heard was what I wanted you to hear. But further along in you’re your reflection my meaning was not received the way I intended for you to receive it. That is connection is not sexual. Connection is a distinctly Mammalian quality, which we as humans have excelled at because of out brain structure. Sex has really nothing to do with building the dikes of Holland for common well-being but connection, empathy and the ability to work and live together has everything to do with dikes that protect the Dutch People. One has to guess the collective dependence of the Dutch community as Dike builders has cause Holland’s wealth to be greater as well as more egalitarian than other national communities.

To continue please forgive me that I was short in my explanation, because the former Japanese prisoner-of-war went on to relate that Sigmund Freud had it all wrong about sex being a driving force in mankind because he suspected Freud had never gone without a meal. The POW continued to talk about true love between these dying men. He meant it not in a homo-erotic context but as connection and care between humans that transcended all else. My point is our need for connection, acceptance is key to our very survival. Just as food is primary over sex. Satisfying the needs for food, shelter, safety and the support from other human beings is paramount all else.

That does not mean I did not hear you in how important and overlooked sex is when it comes to viewing sex as a uniquely human characteristic Mammalian Attachment (bonding).

It is interesting to me Marijke Vonk has chosen not to join this conversation. Did you see her at Mariska Majoo’s celebration of the Prostitution Information Center’s 20th anniversary? She wrote in her blog she was there.

So how did you hear me differently this time? In the mean time I want to think about what the essence was I got from the rest of your post.

Apparently you have been intermittently attentive here as have I. So with out your permission I will attempt to see if I heard you the way you wanted me to hear.

You see the divide between the pro and anti force as being so extreme that “There simply is no common ground for a Golden Bridge Exit approach.” There is no hope for co-creation of co-existence for a verity of reasoned arguments you put forward. These roughly fall into two categories 1) the life serving aspects of human connection expressed in sex work. And 2) the current systemic advantage the anti’s have.

With respect to the first, do you want me to know that the anti’s can’t understand the benefits of sex work within people, between people and as community? And therefore they appose sex work. Your views combined with my understanding of Maggie’s contention the anti’s don’t experience the benefits of human connection and connection within themselves therefore sex must be immoral making it taboo, degrading and a form of evil domination.

I get confused here you say, “The anti’s know that those healing good times will never leave mankind. Next you say, “They know their battle is a delusion….” What I think you want me to understand is they are delusional in there understanding of human needs and expressions for attachment, connection, belonging, building community, safety, shelter well-being etc. And because of this delusional misunderstanding they act in a verity of ways. These actions are Don Quixote like because instead of building connection and dignity between people in Holland their actions degrade community. You see the anti’s attack against immorality is an attack against humanity its self. Therefore by definition they are not listening to reason or logic.

Within the second category you examine your perception of the systemic advantage the anti’s have. You want us to know that within Holland there are only a few vocal anti-people compared with “hundreds of thousands of sex workers are actively doing their work with hundreds of thousands of clients benefiting…” Plus a Dutch population, which is either ambivalent or supportive of community building aspects of sensual connection generally and specifically as a form of commerce such as growing food or maintaining the dikes. These are examples of commercial activities done for greater good of the Dutch community.

Further these few vocal anti’s have gotten into key government positions where they can use tremendous amounts of systemic power to force their agenda. Because they have power they are atractive to other groups wanting to increase their own systemic power to advance very different agendas. The sum total of amassed power puts the anti’ in a position to dictate policy over the vast majority of Dutch people. But the anti’s do it in the name of Egalitarianism and a freer more fair wealthy Dutch society. But you want us to know some people will make a lot of money off displacing a certain form of commerce. That workers become poorer is and connection between the Dutch people is degraded as well.

I hear that given this situation your conclusion is it’s a hopeless situation because a few anti’s hold systemic power and are unwilling to be reasonable.

Frans, several your observations resonate with me and several ideas come up as result. It’s important to check with you that I understood your meaning before we check with each other about continuing our dialog.

I think that Marijke Vonk’s Golden Bridge has great potentials to solve conflict situations. I hope and pray that the dynamics between the Dutch Governments (plural) and Sex Branch will soon be normalized and stabilized to the point that The Vonk Formula could be adopted.
After almost 15 years of administrative mismanagement the daily circumstances of organized, regulated sex work have seriously deteriorated, and still are deteriorating. This mismanagement is due to ongoing ignorance and continued ill will; it also takes advantage of the global trafficking virus.
Still, I am confident that ultimately (give or take another 6-8 political school years), governmental common sense in this matter will rediscover permissive pragmatism (tolerance).

However, the latest news from Amsterdam, the 2013 report from the Prostitution Department,

is straight-out depressing re common sense; even willingness to develop common sense is still absent. The general tone sings urgent and self-congratulatory militantism: “We are on the right track,boys and girls! Trafficking is decreasing! Hallelujah. If we keep working hard our efforts are being rewarded!”
Nowhere a syllable that the situation of sex workers in the branch has improved – which still is the formal justification for the entire legalization operation. The conflict seems to be intentionally nurtured. I’m sure it pays off somewhere.

So, for sex business matters the great city of Amsterdam is still in full battle dress, not the best attire for appearing at a Golden Bridge conference. And re parliament: before to long we’ll see how parliament is going to deal with the newest version of a bill entitled “Regulating Prostitution and Fighting the Wrongs in the Sex Branch” … Not the right material either to bring to the Golden Bridge conference.

Meanwhile, sex workers keep working as they have been, forever, under whatever circumstances, undeterred…

Dear frossum2244
Thanks for giving readers access and your summery of the 2013 report from Amsterdam’s Prostitution Department. The summery is important to international English readers who like me are not at all conversant in Dutch.

If I understand you correctly this report signifies by content and omission (“Nowhere a syllable that the situation of sex workers in the branch has improved – which still is the formal justification for the entire legalization operation”). The tone of the report is anti sex worker and the reports lack of intent to improve working conditions you describe as “the great city of Amsterdam is still in full battle dress” It specifies the battle lines and gives aid to one side at the expense of those the Programma Prostitutie Amsterdam is suppose to serve.

Are you are hoping and praying for a structure where by this conflict can be heard in a forum, which can bring forward how this war is affecting the people of the great city? Where as the existing alignments of systemic power will continue a destructive war. As evidence of that you site the report, which is one-sided and supports the battlefront of what Frans van Rossum calls the “Anti’s”.

I also hear a question. And it sort of relates to a regulatory question of work place safety regarding ship builders and asbestos. If ship workers are worthy of respect and dignity then why did they work without asbestos protection? If sex workers are worthy of respect and dignity why is the city of Amsterdam not supporting then to create an economical safe working environment? So while you pose a political power question (bring about a Golden Bridge conference) you are also posing a social question of how does the great city of Amsterdam bring dignity — connection within people, between people and as community regarding human sensuality? Like asbestos workers who were dismissed as expendable; sex workers need to be embraced with dignity as community. Note: safety of asbestos workers was deliberately overlooked for ease of production by bosses who rigged regulation to harm human beings. When socially speaking asbestos workers became human it was harder for the “antis’s” to justify themselves to maintain systemic power.

In bringing substantive change to the Amsterdam war, I don’t hear you being content to wait “another 6-8 political school years”. Are you searching for ways to restore dignity and to find “the-where-with-all” (force) to bring about (force) a Golden Bridge conference?

The “golden bridge” concept sounds like a fancy way of giving a “trigger warning” before calling a bad guy a bad guy. I wonder how many of our opponents it would actually persuade, and what we would gain as a result.

I’d much rather publish a solid disproof of their views, perhaps without their names, and let them backpedal. Maybe then they’ll be slower to commit themselves next time some nannyist tells them there’s a “crisis” and “something must be done.”

a golden bridge out. What a positive-minded idea. But in couple therapy it assumes that partners have already taken the crucial initiative to solve problems together, are mutually on speaking terms and ready to listen to one another. If lawmakers – where prostitution is legalized – would be willing to sit at the negotiation table with sex workers as equal partners for finding solutions to practical problems, I think that their moral judgment and stigmatization against sex work would already be solved, and that legalization and regulation would be reasonable.
In Holland the initiatives of politicians like Segers and Rouvoet are rooted in the old Christian morals about sex. They are unlikely to sit down with voluntary “happy” sex workers and well-informed sex work activists because these are the Devil’s accomplices. They rather talk with (self-)declared “victims” and all who repent their “lifestyle” and are willing to accept their “golden bridge out”: Rescue NGOs.
In absence of a “therapy” where parties listen and talk on equal footing with the help of an expert mediator, what “golden bridge out” can sex workers anywhere offer law and policy makers from the cage for social outcasts in which they are locked up?
Against “faith,” “belief” and “good intentions”, the objectivity of verifiable facts and personal opinions of individual sex workers and clients goes unheard, like The Voice of One Calling In The Wilderness (John 1:23) but this time because it calls for UNdoing the ways of society and government, and straightening the way for life, lol.

They rather talk with (self-)declared “victims” and all who repent their “lifestyle” and are willing to accept their “golden bridge out”: Rescue NGOs.

Indeed. Rouvoet claims most sex workers are criminally coerced, but most that want his help are quite clearly not. He writes about problems involving poverty due to decreasing numbers of clients, licensing fees, having to rent a home (thanks to not being able to live at their workplace) and so on. If he had any perspective at all, he would see that these problems are exacerbated by anti-sex worker hysteria and restrictions. He also talks about the guilt some sex workers feel, for which fundamentalists such as himself bear a heavy responsibility.

I think the fundamental problem is that these people just cannot imagine anybody being a sex-worker by choice. Must be something in relation to the deep-set fear of sex present in many religions. Hence they create all these elaborate fantasies that help them “understand” and help them avoiding having to face that they have no clue what is going on.

As these people are also authoritarians (about the worst the human race has to offer), they are also fundamentally unable to just tolerate things, they _have_ to control what is going on. That leads to them wreaking unspeakable evil routinely. And this is not anything new, history is full of it and more often than not you find it in connection with religion, or religion-surrogates.

Conversely, while I cannot conceive being a sex worker myself, I have absolutely no problem taking the word of those that are in this profession at face value. If they think it is fine (minus the problems that about any job has), that is enough for me to regard this as perfectly fine way to earn a living.

This is one of the keys, I think: that people can’t conceive of a willingness to sell sexual services. I can’t speak to why with any certainty, but I’d wager it mostly comes down to religious (or other) self-righteous moralising. And since it’s an unreasonable, faith-based position, such people can’t be reasoned out of it.

Frans van Rossum
You need to stop only blaming Christian morals for prostitution prohibition. Mostly Hindu Nepal, Buddist Myanmar, Muslim Saudi Arabia, atheist China and others ban it. These are people with distorted and wrong Christian morals because they believe in legal prostitution prohibition. There are idiots of all religious beliefs who think prostitution prohibition is wonderful including agnosticism, atheism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddism, Shintoism, shamanism paganism etc. There are better Christians with better morals on prostitution allowing for legal prostitution toleration such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, both Christians, who thought sex outside of marriage was morally wrong and that included prostitution. However both thought that the civil government should allow it so that society could have harm reduction. St. Thomas Aquinas likened prostitution to building a beautiful and grand palace without a serpentine so that the palace stinks of excrement. St. Augustine of Hippo said that if you do not allow prostitution in the towns then lust would overthrow society. It needs to be stated that civilized society is being overthrown and prostitution prohibition is one of the reasons why. I love arguing with people about prostitution prohibition. So if one films it,pays 2 performers, and tries to sell it say in Los Angeles, California, then it is pornography and that’s ok but prostitution isn’t as noted by Oracle Z in Return Of Kings blog http://www.returnofkings.com in the article”Is Pornography Really that Different from Prostitution?” http://www.returnofkings.com/38731/is-pornography-really-that-different-from-prostitution Another way to look at it is that it is theoretically legal for a man to sign up for the Ashley Madison Website, impregnate someone’s wife, then let the cuckolded husband sign the birth certificate papers so that the Ashley Madison man never has to pay child support, but in very real terms prostitution is illegal and vigorously enforced.
doclove

Yes, this view is too charitable, people with a self-righteous mindset would have no problem with mass executions for the “good”, questionable whether this aspect of human insanity can be restrained, even most opponents of a particular policy of the Collectivist police state will enthusiastically impose the other policies

I think this mistakes the situation: When two parties that actually want to find a compromise have trouble coming to an understanding, the golden bridge can work wonders. But what we have here is authoritarians with a deeply embedded wish to control what “reality” is, i.e. a very strong desire tell others what to think and believe. And worse, they have one of the “big lies” of our time on their side, namely that “the law” is about what is right and that this does not need justification. Hence, I do not believe that there is actually much wish for compromise on the side of those advocating repression. They think they are right, with the next best thing to a mission from god, why would they want to compromise?

Of course, if you look closer, you notice that nation-states are among the most unethical things humans have ever created and that “the law” is part of their strategy to maintain power and suppress deviation, just as you would expect from any authoritarian construct. The harm amplification typically practiced in this context is really no surprise, as deeply evil as it may be.

That said, other than my disagreement with the way out of this, very nice article!

For those questioning the effectiveness of Ms. Vonk’s proposed solution, perhaps it’s not meant for the ‘true believers’, the Somaly Mams of the world. Rather, it’s for those who are just in passing agreement with the NGOs, those who just write a check, tell their friends they ought to do the same and feel they have ‘done something’. Or those who work for the NGOs not out of any particular devotion to their mission, but merely to get food on the table.

Perhaps if that group was offered a face-saving golden bridge, with the check-writers convinced to give money elsewhere and employees tempted away to better and more fulfilling occupations, then the problem of authoritarians would solve itself. Can you be a successful authoritarian when no one is listening to you, or giving you money to pay others to listen and, more importantly, act on your behalf?

I can’t seem to locate your email address. Are you aware of this case? The sex worker (Jennifer Richmond) made a plea deal to a racketeering count in Orange County, Florida on July 25, 2014 and was sentenced to 3 years in prison. She was an escort and admitted prostitute, but never operated a service or anything like that:

I’d like to give her some publicity and give the Orlando MBI the worldwide attention that they deserve in the process. This girl is 22 years old! She was just a naive escort that worked in Orlando and she needs some help here.

Thank you for any thoughts you may have on this dire situation. I’m also reaching out to Norma Jeane Almodovar because she also has lots of contacts.

Maggie on Twitter

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